Why Smart Bloggers Should Focus On Email Marketing – Examples

If there is one advice I would give to my younger self as a blogger, that will be the focus on email-marketing. Build targeted email-list, and don’t miss out an opportunity of getting your readers on your email list.
Whenever I meet budding bloggers, I often find them asking questions like:
How do I get traffic to my blog?
How do I make money from my blog?
And many more similar newbie questions, but by the end, they all want traffic, and money. If you also feel the same, it’s your time to understand the power of email-marketing.
I’m writing this post after 2274 days of blogging, and I started email-marketing at later stage of my blogging career. This is one of the biggest regrets that I have, as now I realize the actual importance of an E-mail list. For years, I used Feedburner to let my readers subscribe to blog updates, which now seems like a mistake. Having a professional tool helps in many ways. Such as:

• You control when to send email newsletter.
• You can set follow-up email, and new subscribers will receive email automatically.
• You can personalize email using name of the receiver. Personalization is most powerful aspect of email-marketing.
• You can export your email list, and use it for retargeting.

Before I get into in-depth of this topic, let me share some of the benefits of email-marketing for a blog.

• You can reach out to your subscriber any time. Everybody checks email, and that’s the power of having your readers on the list.
• You own the readers and don’t mistake me for the word “Own”. I’m saying in the context of reaching out to them. I have over 1 million followers collectively on my G+ profile and ShoutMeLoud Google Plus page. I have over 62K followers on ShoutMeLoud Facebook page. Sad part is; I can’t control who is going to see my  updates. There are times when I want specific posts to reach out to all loyal readers, and I couldn’t do it with social media marketing. With email marketing tool, I directly reach out to them.
• The traffic which I get from Email blast is quite high, and posts are being seen by highly targeted people. Here is the stats from my email marketing software (I use Aweber), and I have over 5K+ highly targeted users on my email list..
  
• If you do the calculation, my every email sent was being opened by 1200+ people (25%), and CTR on links varies.  Since I’m getting hang of email marketing, I could totally see the high potential over here.
• You can also get people on the waiting list before launching anything new. Having a landing page before the launch could be acquiring readers, customers before the launch. So far, 618 people are subscribed to ShoutUniversity newsletter, and once it’s launch, I have a hyper-targeted list of 618 readers, interested in launching the course. Even if the conversion is 5% from that list, it will be 30 people enrolling for paid membership program. Which means about $6000 in direct revenue.

The practical implementation of email list are limitless, but the catch here is; Your email list should be targeted, and your email newsletter should engage with your subscriber.
With the growth of mobile web, email marketing has become more important. Earlier, people wait to go infant of their system to check emails. Now, everybody has access to the emails on their palm, and according to Always Connected survey:
Email is the number one most popular activity on a smartphone, 78% check email on their mobile phone.

Challenges before & while using the Email marketing tool:

One of the biggest problem which I faced when starting with Email marketing tool is to understand the tricks, and techniques. I signed up for Aweber, and I delayed adding email subscription form for long. The problem was to add a beautiful looking email form on the blog. Thanks to the advancement in WordPress Plugins ecosphere, now we have various plugins to get all this done for us.

• Read: Top 10 WordPress Plugins to Grow Your Email list in no time

Another significant challenge is to send the engaging emails to your subscriber. Many marketers suggest you to treat your email list for selling stuff, which is not the right way to go about it. Your email list is the biggest asset of your blog, and all subscribers are people who love your blog. These people are also your brand advocate, so your goal should always to give them something extra.
If you are looking for a cheap solutions, I will suggest not to focus on email marketing. But if are one of those smart bloggers, who understand the importance of eMail list, you should start investing on the right tool, and right techniques to make most out of it.

• Read: 5 incredible ways to get your first 1000 email subscriber.

From my experience, here are best tools that you should use right now. Depending upon budget, you should pick one.

• Aweber (Starts with 30 days free trial).
• Bloom by Elegant Themes or OptinMonster Plugin (use any of these two to add email subscription box on your blog).
• Leadpages (Use it to create highly converting landing pages on your blog). I have purchased two-year license for $1000, and you can start for as low as $25/month.

Even if you are not ready to invest a lot, I will recommend you to take a free trial of Aweber, and follow below guides to create your first list, and start getting people in your email list.

• Read: How to create first email list using Aweber in next 5 minutes

In the next 30 days, try to send out two emails every week, and you will be amazed to see the engagement.
Are you using Email marketing for your blog growth? What are the challenges which you are facing? Would you recommend upcoming bloggers to focus on email marketing?